photo credit: jasleen_kaur

I was interested – although not surprised – to learn that municipailities leak large amounts of their treated water - sometimes as much as 40%. According to the CBC, that amounted to more than 26 billion (said in a Dr. Evil voice) litres of drinking water. Industry-wide, losing 10% of the total is considered “acceptable” – I have no idea whether Ottawa’s number falls within that amount.

I’m on well water – if I have a leak in one of my pipes, I can empty my well and ruin it within a day. I get that we’re talking about clean water that returns to rivers and gets processed again, but it really irks me that while this is happening they’re airing commercials telling us to turn off our taps while we brush our teeth and avoid watering our lawns in order to preserve water. Sounds a bit contradictory to me – we can make all kinds of tiny changes until we’re blue in the face, but at what point do we get to take responsibility for the huge overall problem?

No related posts.

photo credit: greg westfall.

We’ve been eating far fewer portions of meat compared to before, and have been seeing benefit to that, too. I am by no means suggesting that people should go without meat if they enjoy it, but reducing comsumption brings about serious benefits.

Consider how that hamburger is produced:

1. Petroleum-based chemicals are sprayed on farmland in order to yield grain crops
2. The majority of our farmland is used to produce feed for meat animals
3. The average cow is slaughtered at 21 months – that means 21 months of eating grains and corn which may have otherwise fed people; 21 months of producing CO2 and methane greenhouse gas emissions
4. The cow is transported by truck to slaughterhouse
5. The cow is slaughtered and transported by truck to processing
6. Once processed, beef is trucked to grocery stores, restaurants, etc for consumption

Without being scientific about it, every time we bite into that Big Mac, we pollute as much as we would if we were driving an SUV on the highway each day. By some estimates, the meat industry causes more emissions than the entire transportation system.

In our household, meat won’t be eliminated from our diet any time soon. Nor does the environmental aspect of the problem hit close enough to home to cause a cutback. Instead, we’ve embraced the healthy feeling we get from consuming more fruits, nuts and vegetables; it feels more pure, somehow.

Related posts:

1. Hospitals Save More Lives When They Admit Their Mistakes photo credit: a.drian Suppose you’ve screwed up, badly. Perhaps...
2. Why China Can’t Meet Expectations The Kyoto protocol is coming to the end of its...

This  medal also gave Canada a 14th gold medal – the most any country had ever earned in a Winter Olympics.   This is an incredible feat, considering that Canada previously hosted a Summer Olympics in Montreal and a Winter Olympics in Calgary without winning a gold on homesoil. This has been a controversial Olympics, given some of the problems that occurred (especially with regards to the bobsled course).   However, things turned out pretty well, I’d say.

During the Olympics there were some incredible stories – such as Joanie Rochette who won a Bronze medal despite the death of her mother during the Olympics (in Vancouver no less).  Here’s to London 2012!

By the way, Canada is officially ranked on top of the medal table, meaning Canada wins the Olympics.

Related posts:

1. Fifa ‘to allow GB football team’ The BBC has suggested that FIFA, the international body of...
2. Congratulations to the Pittsburgh Steelers Congratulations to the Superbowl winning team – the Pittsburgh Steelers. ...
3. Obama’s Visit to Canada So last week the President of the United States made...

photo credit: lisa cee

Some key offenders are television sets and DVD players (they’re always “watching” for signal from your remote control) and computers (the BIOS remains powered up and keeps the clock charged even when the machine is off) stoves (if they have a clock). Standby power is irritating because it often exists for no other reason than to wait for your input during the times when you’re not around.

The best advice I can give is: have all of your devices on a good power strip. First, you get surge protection which will extend the life of your electronics. More importantly, you can unplug everything all at once. Just switching off the power bar won’t do the trick because the surge protection will remain charged in order to prevent damage to any connected components during a line spike.

Sometimes you may not want to unplug everything. For example, some cable receivers take several hours to rebuild their libraries after a power outage – you may decide to unplug many but not all devices. There are all sorts of different power bars on the market that accommodate one or two “always on” plugs, allowing you to disconnect the rest of the outlets manually or with a timer.

While the amount of electricity used by standby power may seem small in the scheme of things, we’ve already shown that small efforts add up to big changes. Cutting out that tiny amount of waste may not seem like the ticket out of an energy crisis, but why waste unnecessarily?

Related posts:

1. Green Energy According to the British Council, offshore Welsh wind farms provide...
2. Britain’s Only Wind Turbine Plant Closes photo credit: Caveman 92223 Wind turbines have been in...
3. Drink the Ocean As ideal as it sounds, moving to green energy involves...

photo credit: Dan4th

When it became clear that Democratic candidate Obama stood good chances of winning the presidential election, gun sales surged in the United States. This is despite Obama’s campaign declarations of support for second amendment rights and promises not to impose new restrictions on gun owners.

This week the Chicago Tribune published Obama anti-gun? No, anti-gun control which points out the lack of new gun control measures introduced so far into Obama’s tenure. The article offers good reasons for this:
1) He said he wouldn’t
2) He appears generally uninterested in doing so
3) Even if he did want to do anything, he faces a divided house – it’s much more important for him to pick bigger battles (e.g. war, health care).

Related posts:

1. Gun Sales Surged In Lead up To Obama Presidency Despite the economic downturn, massive layoffs, and an uncertain future,...
2. The World Loves Barry Obama By now president-elect Barack Obama ought to be getting used...
3. Obama’s Visit to Canada So last week the President of the United States made...

No related posts.

Miss England will competing soon in the Miss World competition.

Related posts:

1. Family in England Reduces Garbage to One Bag a Year This video clip was interesting. One family in England has...

Being Canadian, I couldn’t help being a little amused as I scraped my car off, listening to the British complain about a few days of cold.  To be fair, you adapt to the conditions you live in, and a snowstorm in an area unused to them can be disastrous.  I do not know if the issue has been resolved, but I remember UK ministers talking about how they were running low on grit to keep the roads clear – disastrous for drivers unused to snowy weather.  I’ve been told that when it snows in the Carolinas, (snow, but not even to stay on the road) grocery stores are cleaned out of canned goods and people put chains on the tires.

Holiday Inns in the UK have come up with a creative way of dealing with the cold.  Nobody likes to climb into a bed with chilly sheets.  Their solution: have a staff member warm them up for you! The way I understand it, you call the front desk twenty minutes before bed, and a staff member will put on a fuzzy suit and lay in your bed for awhile to have it ready for you.  Novel, I’ll give them that.  I don’t know if this service will be successful or not – personally I would find it creepy to have a stranger in my bed – but I give Holiday Inn credit for promoting themselves in a unique way.

Related posts:

1. Merry Christmas Best wishes to you and your family this Christmas holiday.  ...

photo credit: izik

Gus from Florida has been having a rough time; on December 14, 2009, he woke up and realized to his horror that the world has he knew it had come to an end in a frightening zombie apocalypse. How does Gus cope with his new reality? He Tweets it.

@manvszombies is one of the more entertaining uses of Twitter we’ve seen in awhile. The author has gone so far as to post Twitpics depicting his various (warning: gory) victories against the zombie hordes. It’s not World War Z, but it’s pretty entertaining.

No related posts.

As companies fell one by one, they tried all kinds of bonehead tactics, including suing themselves for damages. The once proud Citigroup self-destructed. Ultimately employees bore the brunt of the economic damage. Greed managed to prevail, of course, as Canada’s capital was held ransom by its transit union in the middle of winter, putting even more of the city’s lowest earners out of work.

Even countries failed. However, it appeared no one told Sweden there was an economic crisis (maybe fueled by the success of the Pirate Party?) while Latvia folded. Eventually the DOW recovered a bit – joy!

Technology may be speeding up our sharing of information, but we still like our embattled old newspapers. Not that it matters, since the only news agency worth following is the BBC, anyway.

Remember Illinois Governer Blagojevich? Let’s not even go there. Blackberry got a presidential endorsement worth over $50 million when President-elect Obama refused to part ways with his cherished device – forcing the CIA to build him a specially-secured unit.

Your privacy remains under siege, but no one seems to worry about the implications of airing their private life on the Internet. The prevailing view is that nothing is your fault anyway – in a particularly gross turn of events, an Ohio teen claimed he shot his parents because they took away his video game.

Facebook is constantly in the news. Your friends are worth less than whopper sandwiches – maybe we would value them more if they weren’t all illiterate.

A bunch of unlikely events happened this year. An African-American man became the 44th President of the United States (and he had his job cut out for him right away), and the Arizona Cardinals made it to the superbowl (although Pittsburgh won it, so all is well in the world). Even the Oscars were weak. While we were otherwise occupied, the monkeys tried to take over.

Not news anymore: The world continues to teeter at the edge of an energy abyss and the powers that be continue to squawk about the merits of the data used to arrive at climate change conclusions when we would be all better off if we started to explore green alternatives. We didn’t even trouble ourselves to write an article about Copenhagen – why bother wasting our breath. Even wind turbines are under seige. California is taking the lead in reducing automobile emissions – time will tell whether they are successful in guiding the rest of the world. I help out by cutting my own firewood from trees that are already dead; I’m a light-weight – real environmentalists use only the finest organic wood(!?). In the end it’s not about technology or one-off changes – creating a sustainable world is going to be hard work – we should start sooner rather than later. Look out for the resource land rush.

At least the spirit of discovery was strong. Using the omniscient Google Earth, scientists were not only able to find the garden of Eden, they were able to find the Lost City of Atlantis! (Although, they lost it again with some haste) Never doubt free information, and never question the wisdom of Wikipedia. Not only is Google leading the way in discovery, they’re leading the way in environmental stewardship by switching their lawn care to goats rather than gas-wasting lawnmowers.

The world continues to resist the magnificent western culture; India made waves once again for its anti-kissing stance… why don’t they want to be hyper-sexualized like us? I wonder if their teenagers spend most of their online time lookup up cosmetic surgery. Maybe they just hate long DVD introductions?

The golden age of Hollywood may be over, but Apple’s is just beginning as video gaming’s Renaissance continues. Sony wasn’t doing so well, and found itself trying to explain why we should care about its PlayStation console. The brave new world has us playing against each other online rather than in the same room.

Back to Obama – the man had some great ideas for improving world security and saving lots of money, and was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize for his idealism. We’re hoping 2010 is the year he finally gains traction. How long will Obama cause jubilation everywhere he travels?

With all the coverage in sports, talk of respect and restructuring of the NHL points system (which must have cost Montreal the cup), no one noticed that Cuba’s government shuffled or that the United Kingdom was thinking about letting Catholics reign as monarchs. Wait a minute stop the presses – Michael Jackson died, nothing else matters!

Related posts:

1. The East Wants In photo credit: ccwen7 Trying to identify the exact point...
2. January 2009 in Review As February approaches, I thought it’d be worthwhile to look...
3. Presidential Endorsement Worth $50 Million According to the New York Times, President-elect Obama’s dedication to...